What happens when Jet Blue cancels your flight? Sadly I know this all too well!
In July, I wrote about my family’s flight being canceled by Southwest. We were caught up in the computer issue that hit the whole Southwest system. This major technical problem affected thousands of Southwest flights, many of which were canceled.
As a result, we missed a family reunion and a nice little getaway we had planned for the weekend in San Diego.
Of course Southwest refunded our tickets, and Hilton Hotels refunded the points we would have used one night of our two-night stay.
It was a bummer, but such is life. You travel and things happen.
But generally not within a few a months!
This weekend, we were taking a quick overnight trip to see my stepdaughter at school. Her sorority had an event on Saturday and we were looking forward to meeting her friends and just spending time together.
Since the trip was short, we were carrying on our luggage and had printed our boarding passes at home.
We got to the airport on Saturday, a little over an hour early, and breezed through security. My husband and I were pondering where to have breakfast in the terminal when we looked up at the airport flight monitor.
Our flight was canceled.
Because we were flying Jet Blue, and they only have two flights out of Sacramento a day, the next flight wasn’t until 8:00 pm that evening.
We headed down to the Jet Blue desk to see what was going on.
Apparently, there was a mechanical issue with the plane.
There were no other planes they could change out for, so the flight was completely canceled.
Jet Blue had automatically rebooked us for the 7:00 pm flight that evening. Considering we would have missed the sorority event, and we were flying home 7:45 am the next day, we decided to scratch the whole trip.
Jet Blue refunded the cost of our tickets and provided each of us with a $50 voucher towards our next trip. Our room at the Hilton was a loss, but fortunately, we used points, so it wasn’t cash out of our pocket.
Also fortunately for us, my stepdaughter comes home this Thursday for Thanksgiving break, so it only delayed us seeing her by a few days.
So we made lemonade out of lemons.
We were up early on Saturday, so we headed to Iron Horse Tavern, one of our favorite places for brunch.
The rest of the day was almost like a bonus day. We had nothing planned because we were supposed to be out of town.
I had run a lot of the errands that I normally save for the weekend over the course of the last week, so we were both left with pretty much a free day.
So while having your flight canceled is no fun at all, sometimes it can force you into a staycation situation.
Sure, I would rather have been having a wonderful dinner in Seal Beach. But having a day with no responsibilities wasn’t all bad.
In fact, it inspired me to try and book a staycation Saturday or Sunday once a month. I definitely felt more rested as I started off my week than I have in a while!
